Asking tenant to provide credit report

[Janie Vowles]

Has anyone had success with asking a tenant to provide his/her own credit report when s/he returns a rental application?  Landlords cannot charge tenants an application fee in Massachusetts, and I am thinking it is easy enough to confirm the recency and authenticity of the report provided. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

[Paul Donoghue]

Hi Janie,

Have the potential tenant go to 

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

to get their free credit report and have them send it to you.

Also Massachusetts has

http://massrealestatelawblog.com/2013/04/24/massac...

Look up to see if the potential tenant has been evicted before.